Page:Collingwood - Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll.djvu/39

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
LEWIS CARROLL
15

without interruption till the death of the latter.

The memory of his birthplace did not soon fade from Charles's mind; long afterwards he retained pleasant recollections of its rustic beauty. For instance, his poem of "The Three Sunsets," which first appeared in 1860 in All the Year Round, begins with the following stanzas, which have been slightly altered in later editions:—

I watch the drowsy night expire,
And Fancy paints at my desire
Her magic pictures in the fire.

An island farm, 'mid seas of corn,
Swayed by the wandering breath of morn,
The happy spot where I was born.

Though nearly all Mr. Dodgson's parishioners at Daresbury have passed away, yet there are still some few left who speak with loving reverence of him whose lips, now long silenced, used to speak so kindly to them; whose hands, long folded in sleep, were once so ready to alleviate their wants and sorrows.

In 1843 Sir Robert Peel presented him to the Crown living of Croft, a Yorkshire village about three miles south of Darlington. This prefer-